What history of NostraAetate would emerge, if, instead of focusing on Catholic sources, scholars adopted a non-Catholic-centered perspective and chose to tell the story from non-Christian sources? What would then remain of Vatican II, as a global event and as as a religious experience for others?
Strongly advocating for this step aside, this paper will outline its historical, theological and archival benefits. Decentering our perspective not only forces us to look for lesser-known archival materials on Vatican II, enriches our perspective and shapes VaticanII's history into a more pluralistic and global approach, encouraging us to reexamine our usual historical/theological categories, backbone to 60 years of scholarship.
I. Indeed, Jewish and Muslims sources, produced during the council years, have long been overlooked, with scholarship mainly based on Catholic, ecumenical or diplomatic sources. Following the recent trends in Church history, VaticanII scholars have in the last two decades further surveyed lesser-known and non-Christian sources (Payne, 2012; Maligot, 2016; Stackaruk, 2019; Herskowitz, 2021). However, a truly multi-sided perspective on "what happened" (O'Malley) during the council is still to be written.
On the one hand, scholarship has highlighted the council aftermaths and the post-Vatican II era (BenJohanan, 2020). Yet, the exploration of a "non-Christian reception" often contains the latter to their reactions and reception, rather than assessing their agency and accounting for their initiatives. If ever mentioned, non-Christians are limited to a shortlist of high-profile names: American-based Jewish agencies (AJC ; WJC); the Israeli and "Arab" (sic) diplomacies; and well-known rabbis, (Heschel, Soloveitchik) The overfocus on Middle-Eastern countries, usually limited to Egypt and Lebanon, completely overlooks other important players such as Syria, Algeria, Iran, Irak and European Muslim communities.
On the other hand, previous anniversaries of NostraAetate (Bialer- Melloni-Lamdan, 2005) and the development of interfaith dialogue have fueled history with memory and contributed to shape a historical tradition that highlights the "Jewish roots" of NostraAetate and grants to Jules Isaac a decisive input. Highly successful in North American scholarship (Crane&Moore, 2016; Tobias, 2017; Borelli, 2021), this "success story", almost legend-like, is indeed both comforting and highly symbolic -- granting interfaith origins to the first council document on interfaith relations. Despite its effectiveness, this memorial tribute doesn't stand the confrontation with a closer historical examination of the largest-possible sample of archival collections, newly recovered and now open to researchers.
It calls for its reexamination, only to unfold in a more nuanced and pluralistic approach of the origins of NostraAetate, where non-Christian interactions with VaticanII have not to be categorised either in "influence" or "reactions", but deserve to be owned, and studied, as autonomous agency.
II. Based on over 100 archival collections (including 33 Jewish collections), this paper argues the limited impact from non-Christians on VaticanII, given the structure of the Catholic Church at the time and its doctrinal stance on non-Christians. The Vatican archives and private papers from members and experts of both Secretariats (SPCU and SNC) which drafted NostraAetate, offer countless evidence of the more-than-often chilly reception of Jewish and Muslim proposals, as developed in pontifical audiences or memoranda. Isaac's first memo triggered utter discomfort at the SPCU in 1960-1961, and even a strong opposition from Willebrands and Bea regarding the definition of Christian antisemitism.
On the other hand, simultaneous Iranian attempts to obtain a mirroring consideration of Islam at VaticanII were immediately sidelined by the Secretary of State. Up to the fall of 1963, when it was reclaimed by African bishops and missionaries, dialogue with Islam lacked -- unlike Judaism -- a powerful sponsor in the aula. The "non-Christian debate" and the archival crossover between Catholic and other sources offer many insights on the internal Catholic dynamics at Vatican II.
Interfaith connections and relations at the Council challenge our traditional emic (Catholic) categories on VaticanII: "reception", "influence", "non-Christians". No less striking was the heavy criticism faced by Isaac for his solo move to reach to Rome. If he was blamed by Jewish agencies for being an "unexperienced diplomatic actor", as for his choices in strategy and way to Church leaders, the "Rome project" his audience initiated launched a complete reorganization in how Jewish organizations handled Church relations. This paper finally covers how Jews (who represented 80% of non-Christian contemporary reactions to VaticanII) experienced it, in an emic (Jewish) perspective.
III. What internal effects had the council on other communities of faith? Despite Vatican II's remoteness from their usual perspective and aloofness to their community of faith, the council years shaped the way Jewish communities in North America, Latin America, Europe and Israel handled relations with the Roman-Catholic Church.
Beyond Soloveitchik and Heschel's controversy, Vatican II triggered heavy halakhic discussions between Orthodox, conservative and reform rabbis, with heavy fallouts in Europe. Following earlier insights from Soloveitchik, the Conference of European Rabbis twice outvoted the Rome Chief Rabbi's motion to send Jewish observers at Vatican II. By contrast, the American-based council of B'naiB'rith admonished its Israeli branch to ease up the orthodox stance on religious freedom, by fear of a backlash on Jewish minorities in the diaspora.
While only few Jewish US defense agencies had seasoned representatives to handle top "community relations" with Christians, both local and national Jewish committees for "interfaith affairs" flourish in the early 1960s to meet the new needs in North America. Smaller communities facing conservative Catholicism in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay made the same move, using new contacts in Rome as touchbase. Reciprocally, several dioceses in the USA (Boston) and Europe (London) took model from these local Jewish committees and build on local contacts to start their own commissions on interfaith relations.
Yet, with public diplomacies on the rise, top Jewish agencies had to play on both fronts, facing strong internal criticism. They closely monitored Jewish reactions to their Vatican diplomacy, through regular polls, public relations departments and awareness campaigns, aimed to convince Jewish communities of the legitimacy and efficiency of "interfaith dialogue" in confronting and uprooting Christian antisemitism. Indeed, these top-down relations with the Vatican were often met at a grassroots level with indifference, suspicion and doubt that the Church could ever change.
Based on over 100 (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) archival collections, this paper re-examines the "Jewish origins" of Nostra Aetate. Surveying the recent literature, published since the last two council anniversary (>2005), it first outlines and then challenges how our current narrative has strongly entangled memory with history in the past decades. Going against the grain and back to archival collections, it elaborates a more nuanced, complex and pluralistic account of Vatican II, through the many immediate "non-Christian" perspectives, which have remained lost or largely unknown to a mainly Catholic scholarship on VaticanII.
As it tries to account for Jewish and Muslim voices on VaticanII in an emic perspective, decentering the narrative from its traditional historical and theological background, context and audience, the paper addresses 60 years of solid scholarship on VaticanII with a daring question: what remains indeed from VaticanII if we tell "what happened there", based on non-Christian sources only?